Getting the News

Five o’clock in the morning of Wednesday, November 21, the phone rang. At first I thought it was part of my dream, but it continued to ring. I slowly got up, groggy, half-asleep and I answered the phone. “Hello,” I said in an annoyed tone. The voice on the other end started to talk, but I couldn’t identify who it was. The voice told me that there was an accident and that Dina and Chaya were all right. She continued to say that she wanted to come over. Come over? I didn’t understand why. Why? I asked Mrs. Bernard, finally recognizing the voice. “What is really wrong?” I persisted. She hesitated and said “Yonah didn’t make it.” “Yonah didn’t make it,” I repeated.” What?” I screamed. “This can’t be true.” This must be nightmare, I assured myself. I crawled back into bed. This had to be a nightmare. I wanted to wake up and say that it was a horrible dream. But Mrs. Bernard did come over and my worst fear became a reality. I woke up Shlomo who immediately contacted his father who already left for work.

We all rushed in a daze to pack. My neighbors across the street came over to help us. They busied themselves with helping us pack, straightening out my kitchen, washing some dishes. The Bernards rushed us to the train station and we took a train to Kennedy Air Port. At Kennedy Airport we waited anxiously for my oldest son Zev, who flew in from Las Vegas. We hoped he would make the flight. He came as we started to board.

The flight was somber and long. I kept on hoping that this was a bad dream. My oldest daughter, Rifka, had brought along books to read dealing with suffering, death, and laws of mourning. Though I read some passages, I could not absorb any of the words. My head and heart ached with pain. Such anguish I have never experienced not even after the death of my parents. When we arrived at Tel Aviv, we got VIP service to rush us through customs and into a car. The whole trip felt surreal. When we arrived at the cemetery (Har HaMenuchos), I saw my son’s name posted on a board and time for the service. I shuddered. It was true. It was not a dream. My son, Yonah, was going to be buried. As I stood waiting for the start of my son’s funeral, I saw a crowd gathering. I recognized people from Baltimore and Kansas.

I saw an impressive spectrum of Jews: Dati, Yeshivish, Sephardim, Ethiopian Jews, Indian Jews. Jews from all walks of life — Police, soldiers, students, etc. All knew or met my Yonah. When I looked at the crowd, I was in a daze. My face was covered with pain, such horrible pain. My youngest daughter fell to her knees sobbing and some of her friends lifted her up.

The immediate family was hurried into a cold room. In the middle of the room I stared at a body wrapped in a white shroud lying on a white marble slab. I stood horrified looking at the wrapped body. I approached it and touched the body. It felt so cold and hard. In disbelief, I cried out “Yoni, get up, get up”. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it. There was my son, whom I had once nurtured, loved and embraced, lying stiff and immobile on a cold slab. The door of this room opened up to a crowd of people. Some rabbi said something and my husband made a brief speech. He told the crowd that Yonah was a gift to everyone. And now Hashem has taken away his gift. Time is the essence in Jewish burial. The body must be buried before sunset. Suddenly some men hoisted up the shrouded body and walked out while we followed them. We followed behind, walking silently, painfully down a curvy road to the cemetery. I saw so many, many headstones. I was in the city of the dead. The graves looked out at a beautiful hill dotted with apartments. The dead watched the living. We stopped at an empty grave. A man put down a couple of boards and then lowered the shrouded body into the grave. People covered it quickly with sand and dirt. My oldest son, Rabbi Zev Goldman, started to speak. It was a moving, heartwrenching hesped about what he would tell Yonah’s son when he is older about his father. Yonah’s 10 month old son will never remember how much his father loved him and played with him. Zev’s speech was followed by Rabbi Schwartz’s reflections. Rabbi Schwartz made aliyah a few years ago from Kansas. Rabbi Schwartz had proceeded over Yonah’s Bar Mitzvah in Kansas. He gave him a beracha (blessing) under Yonah’s wedding canopy in Jerusalem. He was the mohel for Binyamin Zvi, Yonah’s son, at his bris. And finally he gave one of the hespedim over Yonah’s grave. He seemed to be with Yonah at each monumental life step. Each of us then placed a small stone on Yonah’s grave. My agony paralyzed me and I could hardly walk away. My heart was weeping and breaking for my sweet, funny, kind, idealistic son of 24 years old.